The Red Rover eBook

“You contradict yourself, Roderick. He
is, and he is not. Have you not said how terrible
you find his moody language?”

“Yes; for I find it changed. Once he was
never thoughtful, or out of humour, but latterly he
is not himself.”

Mrs Wyllys did not answer. The language of the
boy was certainly much more intelligible to herself
than to her young and attentive, but unsuspecting,
companion; for, while she motioned to the lad to retire,
Gertrude manifested a desire to gratify the curious
interest she felt in the life and manners of the freebooter.
The signal, however, was authoritatively repeated,
and the lad slowly, and quite evidently with reluctance,
withdrew.

The governess and her pupil then retired into their
own state-room; and, after devoting many minutes to
those nightly offerings and petitions which neither
ever suffered any circumstances to cause them to neglect,
they slept in the consciousness of innocence and in
the hope of an all-powerful protection. Though
the bell of the ship regularly sounded the hours throughout
the watches of the night, scarcely another sound arose,
during the darkness, to disturb the calm which seemed
to have settled equally on the ocean and all that
floated on its bosom.

Chapter XXIV.

—­“But, for the miracle,
I mean our preservation, few in millions
Can speak like us.”—­Tempest.

The “Dolphin” might well have been likened
to a slumbering beast of prey, during those moments
of treacherous calm. But as nature limits the
period of repose to the creatures of the animal world,
so it would seem that the inactivity of the freebooters
was not doomed to any long continuance. With
the morning sun a breeze came over the water, breathing
the flavour of the land, to set the sluggish ship
again in motion. Throughout all that day, with
a wide reach of canvas spreading along her booms, her
course was held towards the south. Watch succeeded
watch, and night came after day, and still no change
was made in her direction. Then the blue islands
were seen heaving up, one after another, out of the
sea. The prisoners of the Rover, for thus the
females were now constrained to consider themselves,
silently watched each hillock of green that the vessel
glided past, each naked and sandy key, or each mountain
side, until, by the calculations of the governess,
they were already steering amid the western Archipelago.

During all this time no question was asked which in
the smallest manner betrayed to the Rover the consciousness
of his guests that he was not conducting them towards
the promised port of the Continent. Gertrude wept
over the sorrow her father would feel, when he should
believe her fate involved in that of the unfortunate
Bristol trader; but her tears flowed in private, or
were freely poured upon the sympathizing bosom of her